Top all-time · #9672
Blake Watson
Personal blog · blakewatson.com/journal · on HN as blakewatsonprogrammingwebdesign
Blake Watson's personal blog at blakewatson.com covers programming, web and design. Since 2017, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Writing and coding by voice with Talon”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Blake Watson's posts on writing and coding by voice with Talon, and a PDF on performance optimization of smartphone keyboard layouts, in threads on accessibility for engineers and on keyboard design.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I’m a software engineer, side-project enthusiast, hobbyist game developer, sometimes writer, and full-time wheelchair user.
Most-linked posts?
- Writing and coding by voice with Talon2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-12-31
- I used Claude Code and GSD to build the accessibility tool I've always wanted2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-19
- Surveying the landscape of CSS micro-frameworks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-13
What Hacker News says?
Late to this discussion, but witnessing the amazing community support is uplifting and I thought I'd drop a couple of links I don't think I saw in any other comments: 1. Talon - Writing code by voice: https://www.blakewatson.com/journal/writing-and-coding-by-vo... 2. Gordon Gund - Blind later in life, conquered the market by speed listening. Quote: "Meanwhile his (acquired) blindness seemed to pour gasoline on the f…
Comment linking /journal/writing-and-coding-by-voice-with-talon/
on “Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”Submitted Why I deleted my Facebook account as a story · 438 points
HN discussionMy struggle is typing. I use an onscreen keyboard ( https://www.blakewatson.com/journal/writing-and-coding-with-... ), which I have heavily customized for web development. I would appreciate terseness. For example, I love how in JS, I can do this: ``` var cat = whichCat(); var catPosts = posts.filter(post => post.cat === cat); ``` Whereas in PHP, I have to do this: ``` $cat = whichCat(); $catPosts = array_filter($po…
Comment linking /journal/writing-and-coding-with-the-accessibility-keyboard/
on “Ask HN: How should a programming language accommodate disabled programmers?”Submitted Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing as a story · 394 points
HN discussionhttps://blakewatson.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted Writing and coding by voice with Talon as a story · 98 points
HN discussionI have a bunch of these. They are my favorite things to make. I've been making things like this for a long time but I only recently started to appreciate them after discovering this article. https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ - I have a disability and require daily personal care so I made a system for recruiting and hiring caregivers. ( https://blakewatson.com/journal/a-home-cooked-app-for-hiring... )…
Comment linking /journal/the-joys-of-home-cooked-apps/
on “Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?”Submitted Rediscovering Sublime Text as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI think Ponder is cool! I made something similar for myself, but never got around to supporting more than one text. https://blakewatson.com/scratchpad/
Comment linking /scratchpad/
on “Finish Your Projects”Submitted A Decade of Employment as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHere's the backstory for my app: https://www.blakewatson.com/journal/my-answer-to-the-gratuit...
Comment linking /journal/my-answer-to-the-gratuitous-new-tab-page/
on “Show HN: A Fine Start – a concise new tab page”Submitted Building our own private Discord knockoff as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIf one could swipe through the center without inserting a space, it would be incredible instead of perhaps only great... There was a PalmOS 5 keyboard like this named myKbd(1) based on some IBM research(2) which was quite fast to use. the atomik layout was quite quick to use. (1): https://palmdb.net/app/mykbd (2): https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327051HCI172&3_4 https://blakewatson.com/uploads/2023/07/Performance_Optimiz…
Comment linking /uploads/2023/07/Performance_Optimization_of_Virtual_Keyboards.pdf
on “Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones”Submitted The making of d20 version 3 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Finishing Side Projects as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unpopular opinion: switching to WordPress in 2019 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The terrifying liminal space between code-writer and bot-prompter as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Understanding, not slop, is what's interesting about LLMs as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing and Coding with the MacOS Accessibility Keyboard as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted I used Claude Code and GSD to build the accessibility tool I've always wanted as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rebuilding My Website with Eleventy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My journey with the Chubon keyboard layout as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thinking in Rich Text as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Synthwave.live, a Nostalgic Musical Odyssey as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Speaking in code: hands-free input with Talon as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: A simple JavaScript-powered Yahtzee clone as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I host my websites with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Array Reduce in JavaScript and PHP as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Playing Minecraft by Voice with Talon as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My answer to the gratuitous new tab page as a story · 2 points
HN discussion